de0u I don't think that position is consistent with the GrapheneOS project's position as recently quoted in this thread (Molasses).
What I said is correct. Some of their quotes seem to be aligned with what I said. See:
Molasses Trusted Execution Environments such as TrustZone and SGX are not secure elements. Apple SEP, Titan M2 and Qualcomm SPU are secure elements.
Molasses Apple SEP is similar to Qualcomm SPU. It's a separate secure processor
Molasses TEEs are not really in the same space at all because the regular CPU cores are (…)
(This quote implies that TEEs use the same CPU cores. The secure element has its own internal processor separate from the main CPU.)
Molasses Qualcomm Snapdragon has their TrustZone-based QSEE as the TEE and the flagships also have their Secure Processing Unit (SPU) on as a separate processor
de0u I think it may be premature to decide that the on-chip secure element for a not-yet-released device for which the GrapheneOS team does not have technical documentation is not secure enough.
I didn't say this.
Fortunately, even if it was true, I think the upsides of having another smartphone brand, non-Google, meeting GrapheneOS's requirements greatly outweigh the downsides. GrapheneOS has proper encryption, so a long password can properly remove the dependency on the secure element for brute force protection. It has exploit mitigations, USB-C port blocking, auto-reboot, zero-on-free, and reset attack mitigation which help protect data from theft while decrypted, and bring it to encrypted at rest state quickly. Most people probably wouldn't have to be bothered by someone hacking their phone with a secure element exploit, but if anyone is looking to mitigate it, it's already possible.